Look after your body. Keep doing what you love
Movement coaching designed for dancers to develop strength, improve mobility and gain a deeper understanding of their bodies. Through guided movement and thoughtful training, you'll develop greater awareness of your body — exploring muscular coordination, alignment, mobility and strength, and how these elements work together to support the way you move.
Because a long and sustainable dance journey requires more than physical strength and technical training. It requires an understanding of your own body.
Book your free call
The best place to start is with a chat. I’d love to learn more about you, your goals, and what you’re looking for. I can talk you through my process and training options, answer any questions you have, and see how I can best support you.
Use the calendar to book a time that suits you!
What you will explore
SOMA for Dancers offers an opportunity to explore how your body moves, works and responds.
Through guided movement and thoughtful training, you'll explore:
Breath and core connection – understanding how breathing, your core and pelvic floor work together to support movement.
Core strength and control – building on this understanding to develop effective core training, using breath to support muscular engagement and control.
Ribs, spine and pelvis – developing greater awareness, mobility and coordination through this central area of your body.
Muscular coordination – understanding how different muscles work together and how to engage and train them effectively.
Strength and mobility – developing strength and control through a variety of positions and ranges of movement.
Feet and lower body – exploring how your feet connect with the ground and contribute to the way you move.
Movement patterns – recognising habitual ways of moving and discovering different ways to organise your body.
For dancers who want to understand and train their bodies beyond the surface of dance technique.
Working with Niamh has been the best investment in my future as a dancer. There has been so many stages of progress. From feeling more ease and comfort in my body to finding more strength, mobility and confidence. Its been a journey of discovering and rediscovering my movement potential. Thankyou Niamh.
Why this matters for dancers
Dance places specific demands on the body. Years of training develop incredible technical skill, strength and flexibility, but understanding the underlying mechanics that allow us to move smoothly, efficiently and with ease is just as important.
How we breathe, coordinate our muscles, organise our core and move through our joints all influence our movement, from finding control through different ranges to transitioning smoothly between movements.
Repeatedly working in familiar positions and patterns can create habits, tension or restrictions that affect how freely and comfortably we move.
By exploring different ways of moving, working in a variety of positions and developing strength and control through different ranges of movement, we can build greater awareness, adaptability and freedom of movement.
SOMA compliments dance training by helping you understand how to train for more efficient movement and what your body needs to move better, with greater ease and freedom.
SOMA supports dancers who are:
Curious about how their bodies move and work, and want to develop a deeper understanding of their own movement.
Looking to build strength, mobility and muscular coordination beyond the demands of their regular dance training.
Wanting to develop greater freedom and ease in their movement, exploring why certain movements feel restricted or uncomfortable.
Experiencing recurring areas of tension, discomfort or restriction that they've come to accept as just part of dancing, and are curious about whether things could feel different.
Interested in improving their movement awareness, control and understanding of how their muscles work together.
Wanting to explore different ways of moving, develop greater physical adaptability and take a more informed, active approach to looking after their bodies throughout their dance journey.
My story - working with Dancers
For the past 20 years, I've worked at the Centre for Advanced Training at Trinity Laban, where my role as Performance Enhancement Tutor has involved developing and delivering a conditioning programme for young dancers. Alongside this, I've worked one-to-one with dancers who needed more individualised conditioning support, including those who needed to build great muscle awareness, strength and understanding and also those who were injured or struggling to overcome pain.
Working closely with dancers in this way has given me a real insight into the physical demands of dance and the different challenges dancers face when developing strength, control and movement awareness.
Throughout this time, one thing has continually stood out to me: dancers can be incredibly skilled at executing complex movements, yet find it much harder to organise their bodies efficiently when it comes to conditioning exercises. Understanding how to engage their muscles, coordinate different parts of their body and execute exercises with effective technique isn't always straightforward.
This experience made me increasingly curious about what was happening beneath the surface of dance technique and the highly specialised movements dancers practise every day. I became interested in how the body organises itself to create movement — how we breathe, engage our core, move through our ribs and spine, coordinate our hips and pelvis, and connect through our feet. I wanted to understand how these elements work together, how muscles coordinate to support movement, and how developing greater awareness of these underlying processes could help dancers move more efficiently, freely and with control.
I believe it's important to complement dance training with opportunities to explore and train movement in different ways — working in unfamiliar positions, developing strength through different ranges and addressing areas that may receive less attention in dance training. By broadening the ways in which dancers move, we can help them develop a more adaptable, balanced and responsive body, better equipped to meet the varied demands of dance.
My aim is to help dancers develop a deeper understanding of their bodies, explore movement with greater awareness, and build strength, coordination and mobility in ways that support their dancing and wider physical wellbeing.
I believe that understanding your body is just as valuable as learning what you can do with it.